South African Judge Throws Out Police Suit Against 2 Papers

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN, Special to The New York Times

Published: January 19, 1991

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 18—
A judge ruled today against a senior police general who sued two leading anti-apartheid newspapers after they reported that he had supplied poison to police operatives to kill members of the African National Congress.

Lieut. Gen. Lothar Neethling, who heads the police forensic laboratories in Pretoria, had demanded damages of $600,000 from The Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad, which he accused of defaming his reputation.

But Justice Johan C. Kriegler decided in favor of the two small weekly newspapers, which have been relentless in trying to expose illicit activities by the police, and ordered General Neethling to pay their court costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars. General's Testimony Doubted

The judge's ruling did not directly address the issue of whether General Neethling was criminally guilty of the acts described in the news accounts, but he did say many of the details contained in the published interviews with the General's accuser had been independently substantiated. At the same time, he said he had found the general to have been evasive in his own testimony.

The ruling is a setback for the South African Police as a whole because it gives fresh credence to persistent charges that police assassination squads have attacked opponents of apartheid. A formal commission of inquiry held by Justice Louis Harms, another South African judge, had dismissed such charges in November.

Justice Kriegler, who read his decision for two days in the Rand Supreme Court in Johannesburg, accepted the truth of the articles published by the Afrikaans-language Vrye Weekblad on Nov. 17 and Dec. 1, 1989, and most of what The Weekly Mail reported at greater length in November 1989.

The judge ruled that the public's right to know outweighed the sanctity of an individual's reputation. Appeal Is Planned

General Neethling, whose lawsuit had been supported by the South African Police, jumped up to announce that he would appeal Justice Kriegler's decision.

"It is the biggest victory that the press has seen in decades," Max du Preez, the editor of Vrye Weekblad, said in an interview later. "In the minds of South Africans, I think it re-establishes the credibility of the printed press."

Mr. du Preez predicted that Government officials would now be less ready to use a familiar tactic of threatening critical newspapers with legal action.

"When they want to shut up a newspaper, they sue it for defamation," he said.

Vrye Weekblad and The Weekly Mail had published interviews with Dirk Coetzee, a retired security police captain, who said he headed an assassination squad that killed or terrorized opponents of apartheid.

Mr. Coetzee said General Neethling had supplied poison and "knockout drops" to eliminate members of the African National Congress, which was banned at the time. Supplies of Poison

He said General Neethling had given him some poison from the police laboratory and had asked him to report on whether the poison worked. After it failed to kill two African National Congress members, Mr. Coetzee said, the general supplied a much heavier dose. The general denied that he had trafficked in poisons.

In a painstaking summary of the case, Justice Kriegler first seemed to favor General Neethling, whom he described as an "impressive policeman, a well-educated man of high caliber and a forensic scientist of great international renown."

By contrast, he called Mr. Coetzee "a man who had left behind his children and his aging parents in South Africa, a man who had turned his back on his own people and had joined the enemy overseas."

Mr. Coetzee, who fled the country when he gave Vyre Weekblad details of his involvement in assassination squads, subsequently joined the African National Congress in exile. His wife and two sons followed him abroad.

The judge also said Mr. Coetzee had offered "a story of quasi-official, illegal acts by police officials which are practically unthinkable." Many Details Documented

But, the judge acknowledged, many details of what Mr. Coetzee had reported about the activities of police assassination squads were subsequently documented officially in South Africa and Botswana.

And he called General Neethling's testimony evasive and misleading. He further concluded that Mr. Coetzee had met the general and even had his unlisted home telephone number.

Justice Kriegler said the two newspapers had served the public interest by reporting what they understood to be police abuses of authority.

"The articles were published against the background of a public debate about the misuse of power by public servants, and the public had the right to be informed about this," the judge said. Harms Commission Report

On Nov. 13, Justice Harms, who was appointed by President F. W. de Klerk to look into reports of covert and illegal operations by the security forces, concluded that there was no evidence that police assassination squads existed and dismissed Mr. Coetzee as a "psychopath."

Mr. du Preez, who said the cost of Vrye Weekblad's legal defense had exceeded its annual budget, proposed that the activities of the police forensic laboratories should now be investigated.

Lawyers for Human Rights, a civil rights organization based in Pretoria, said in a statement today that Justice Kriegler's decision would "open up once again the can of worms surrounding the Harms Commission."

The South African Union of Journalists said in a statement that it hoped the case "will lead to the dawning of a new age in freeing the press from unwarranted restrictions."

Photo: "It is the biggest victory that the press has seen in decades," said Max du Preez, editor of Vrye Weekblad in Johannesburg, after a judge ruled against a police general who sued the newspaper. (Associated Press)